“I understand why both women would keep this information to themselves for so many years, without involving the police,” Lakshmi wrote. “For years, I did the same thing.”

To people saying “Why didn’t he/she report it?” When something so evil happens to you it takes a long time to process it. In our victim-blaming culture it takes incredible courage to come forward. The victim is treated like the perpetrator.

“We were intimate to a point, but he knew that I was a virgin and that I was unsure of when I would be ready to have sex,” she wrote.

On New Year’s Eve, several months after they started dating, they went to some parties and then back to his apartment where Lakshmi said she promptly fell asleep. She awoke to a “very sharp stabbing pain” between her legs, she said. “Afterward, he said, ‘I thought it would hurt less if you were asleep.’ Then he drove me home.”

Lakshmi said she didn’t report the assault to anyone and that it took her “decades to talk about this with intimate partners and a therapist.”

There were a number of reasons for this. Lakshmi blamed herself, and she didn’t classify the incident as “rape” in her head initially.

She also described an earlier experience of molestation when she was 7 years old, which resulted in her parents sending her to live in India for a year when she told them about it.

“The lesson was: If you speak up, you will be cast out,” Lakshmi wrote.

The third time I was assaulted I was 23. I thought that no one would believe me, because no one wanted to stand up to him. I had seen the way Anita Hill was treated when she came forward. #WhyIDidntReport

On Tuesday, Trump similarly questioned the credibility of Deborah Ramirez, who says Kavanaugh exposed his penis to her when they were in college. The president claimed Ramirez “has nothing” because “she admits she was drunk” at the time of the alleged assault.

Questioning whether assault victims were drunk, what they were wearing or why they didn’t come forward sooner, Lakshmi said, reinforces the very views that keep survivors silent.

“We all have a lot to lose if we put a time limit on telling the truth about sexual assault and if we hold on to the codes of silence that for generations have allowed men to hurt women with impunity,” she wrote.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this story misstated when Ramirez alleges the assault took place. She says it was in college, not high school.